China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

“Just this,” said Trader. “Once you’ve got huge crowds out in the street, it doesn’t matter who’s in charge, they may not be able to control ’em. And whoever leaves the protection of the Legation Quarter will be utterly defenseless. If the Boxers kill us, with or without Cixi’s orders, she can always claim that it wasn’t her fault. Our only hope is to barricade ourselves in here until the relief force arrives.”

This seemed to strengthen the resolve of the diplomats to wait and see. So that was what they did.

—

It was the next day that Trader privately intervened in the business of the legations. Not that many people knew it. He asked Henry to gather as many of the missionaries as possible on the tennis court for a prayer meeting. When they were gathered, he discreetly joined them.

Then, asked by Henry to say a few words before they prayed, he spoke simply and to the point. “If we want to survive this,” he told them, “we may need more than your prayers. We need your skills. For so far as I can see,” he went on frankly, “these diplomats can’t seem to agree with one another about anything much. And they couldn’t organize a beer-fest in a brewery. There’s no central organization in the Legation Quarter, no coordination of medicine, food, supplies, anything. You fellows have all run missions. If you don’t take over this place, we’ll never get anywhere.”

“The heads of the legations may object,” Henry pointed out.

“I’d give you ten to one against. Because none of them knows what to do.”

“What about the defenses, barricades, that sort of thing?” Henry asked, looking around.

“As it happens,” an American Methodist confessed, “I’m a qualified engineer.”

From then on it was plain sailing. Within hours, effective barricades were up and emergency accommodations allocated. The missionaries had set up a food committee, a laundry, a sheep pen, a yard for the milking cows, and an infirmary staffed with two doctors and five nurses.

Which was just as well since, at four o’clock that day, with a single shot from the back of a Chinese store nearby, the siege of the legations began.

—

Many things surprised John Trader in the weeks that followed. The first was that they were still alive at all.

They’d prepared their defenses pretty well. The big city wall overlooking them was manned, with barricades at each end of their section. If the wall was lost to the enemy, they were finished.

The smaller outlying legations—the Austrians, Belgians, and Dutch—were abandoned as too difficult to defend. Even the Americans, nearest to the western barrier on Legation Street, had been brought into the safer British compound. If the American troops were the best marksmen, the Japanese were the most disciplined and reliable, and they were guarding the swollen numbers of converts across the canal in the Fu.

Besides the sniping, there was bombardment from the small Chinese field guns, every day and most of the nights.

The converts in the Fu were pressed into service as general laborers and were kept constantly busy repairing the damage and building new barricades.

The greatest fear was fire. Aside from the fire watch, a chain of fire buckets was kept constantly at the ready, for one never knew when the Boxers would lob another bundle of flaming rags soaked in kerosene over the walls. One terrible night the red-turbaned Boxers set fire to the old Chinese library by the compound’s northern wall. “They’ve just burned some of their own greatest national treasures in the hope of setting fire to us,” Henry remarked in disgust.

“War and intelligence never march together,” Trader remarked.

For the family, however, there was one welcome relief. With all the hundreds of extra folk crowding into the British compound, dormitory space was at a premium, and they had been sleeping, with many others, on mattresses in the compound’s chapel, until Lady MacDonald quietly came up to Emily one day.

“I hate to think of your father having to sleep on the chapel floor at his age,” she said. “We have one spare room in our house. And if my two daughters share, we’ll have two. We wondered if you and your husband would like to use one of them and your father the other. They have beds.”

“I’m sure…” Emily began, then hesitated. “I’ll ask Henry right away.”

“Take them,” said Henry when she told him.

“You don’t feel it’s unfair for us to be getting special treatment?”

“Take them.”

Later, when she informed her father, he was delighted. “You and Henry have one room,” he said. “Tom can sleep with me.”

“I’m sure she only offered because you own Drumlomond,” Emily said.

Trader smiled. “I knew there must be some reason I bought the place.”

A less happy surprise came a few days later. Trader and Henry were just out near the tennis court when they suddenly heard a fusillade of shots coming from the west end of Legation Street, and a few moments later a whooping noise as a little cart, piled high with provisions and driven by a fifteen-year-old boy in a cowboy hat, came bouncing into the compound. As it drew up, the body of one of the converts fell off the back of the cart and lay motionless upon the ground.

Trader recognized the youth in the hat at once. It was young Fargo. Knowing the general store that lay on the Chinese side of the now-vacated American legation was full of good things, he’d secretly commandeered a cart and two Chinese converts, run the gauntlet of sniper fire, and filled up the cart with provisions.

Fargo had been lucky: He returned without a scratch. The two Chinese had not been so fortunate. One was wounded; the other, whose body had fallen off the cart, was dead. He was given a good funeral, as a mark of respect. But Fargo was taken to task only slightly for risking the fellow’s life, and his mother was told to keep most of the food. After all, she was an excellent cook; and whenever the